This is a guest post from Thanh Tran, an Inside Fellow with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. The Inside/Outside Fellowship is a new dual fellowship program designed to increase contributions to the Ella Baker Center’s policy work by people who are directly impacted by legislation advancing racial and economic justice.
It was February, 2019, when I was introduced to organizing, and perhaps even brought back to life. While serving my time inside San Quentin Prison, I felt like I was drowning. I had failed to get my sentence commuted by Governor Jerry Brown before he left office. The woman that I loved deeply left me because my release date was nearly a decade away, and even as I write this, I can still feel that sinking feeling I felt then: helplessness.
But it was so much deeper than being unable to obtain my release or hold onto my relationship with the woman I loved. It was the helplessness I felt as my mother was arrested and I was placed in foster care. It was the helplessness I felt when I was beaten by officers in county jail, but unable to press charges. It was the helplessness I felt when I was sentenced to prison when what I needed most was help.
Back in 2019, as I spiraled in this helplessness, my friend and mentor James King (State Campaigner with the Ella Baker Center) lifted me up and told me about “inside organizing.” He told me that I was, in fact, not helpless. That even while I was incarcerated, I had the ability to reshape the world around me. I could right the wrongs I witnessed all my life and push the pendulum towards justice.
“Prove it,” I thought to myself.
James gave me reading material about prison abolition and organizing, then welcomed me to the inside organizing team at San Quentin - a small group working to reform criminal justice policies from within prison. What James does not know (or perhaps he does) is he changed my life that day. Sitting in that first meeting, listening to these men who were exponentially more intelligent than me, talking about prison abolition and strategies to reshape the justice system, blew me away.
My life struggles up until that point had instilled in me a sense of learned helplessness. A sense that I was to accept the injustices inflicted upon me and my community, grit my teeth, and somehow succeed. Watching these inside organizers pour their souls into this fight and get results changed my worldview about what was possible. Not only as an incarcerated person, but that it was possible to change the criminal justice system in totality. “Envisioning new terrains of justice,” as Angela Y. Davis puts it.
It’s two years later now - February, 2021 - and little ol' Thanh is the first official Inside Fellow for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. I feel honored and empowered by this role and this work. Honored because there’s so much I need to learn:
How to lobby legislators. How to best shape narratives. How to become a more effective organizer from the inside or out in society.
Although there’s much I need to learn, I feel empowered because I know I now have the resources to learn these things. In this role, I aim to lift up and empower people the same way James lifted me up when I was drifting into helplessness. I aim to educate myself and my peers in this legislative process and our role in shaping policy advocacy. Most importantly, I aim to redistribute the power, resources, and opportunities that this fellowship blesses me with.
I am not an exception. I am a reflection of what happens when you invest in our incarcerated population. I am what happens when you dedicate resources and time to empower those who are most impacted by this work.
My hope is that I am the first of many Inside Fellows with the Ella Baker Center. My hope is that we continue to cultivate the untapped pool of potential and ability inherent to our incarcerated population. This is only the beginning of something great, something incredible. I look forward to shaping a new future with you all.